Sound Engineering
Abstract In the most basic terms, Sound Engineering is designing, choosing, and organizing sounds in a particular order, to have meaning. In Jodi Shipka's terms, sound engineering is an "activity-based multimodal theory of composing" (as described in her article "Sound engineering: Toward a theory of multimodal soundness"). Key Concepts Scholars like Jodi Shipka explored reasons as to why sound, oral or aural, may work better as a mode of communication in certain situations, opposed to text or film or example. She says, "An activity-based multimodal approach to composing provides us . . . with strategies for attending to the complex ways that a greater variety of senses, semiotic resources, and rhetorical positioning might be taken up and brought together, . . . to help them accomplish specific kinds of work in specific contexts. Examples One example of sound engineering would be the "2 Guy" commercial created by the popular drive-in fast-food chain Sonic. These funny and award-winning commercials feature two guys sitting in a car outside Sonic letting their friendship unfold over bites of hamburgers and fries. The design of the commercial is ideal for the audience it is aiming for. Sonic's brand image is that of an everyday, down-to-earth restaurant that is widely accessible to the public. That is why the 2 men featured in the commercial are dressed simply in blue jeans and t-shirts while cracking jokes. Another example of these ideas coming together is in our latest WAM project, which was a short silent film. Although the sound engineering may not have seemed to have played a big part in a silent film, we were to pick and choose songs to go with the film we had shot. Sound and music can be strongly influential as to how one perceives a piece of work. For my film, my setting was a beautiful prairie a little ways off campus. To go with that sort of environment, I used various Grizzly Bear songs. Such as: Grizzly Bear - Granny Dinner, which in my film made the visuals seem wonderful, serene, and dreamlike. Sound engineering can also be related to story telling. As we learned in Ira Glass' The Art of Storytelling, ''the way that a story is told orally is very important when considering audience engagement and understanding. He explains that a story that is told in the standard format of a topic sentence followed by the body of the story is banal and will cause the audience to be disengaged. However, beginning a story with an anecdote and then the overall purpose of the story is more "soundly engineered", so to say, and will allow the audience to grasp a better understanding of the subject. Storytelling using Glass' template affords the audience a deeper meaning of a subject as opposed to it being written or in visuals. An example of this can be a soundly engineered speech. Great speeches typical start off with the personal thoughts and feelings the speaker may have connected to the situation at hand. Soundly engineered speeches also give more emotion through tone than a written or visual meaning ever could. This then leads them into discussing the topic, but in a way that has the audience even more engaged and attentive, thus allowing their speech to be a better means of communication than if they had simply wrote it or used visuals to describe it. '''Critical Conversation' Google scholar had about 323 results for “Sound Engineering” by Jody Shipka. It gets integrated into articles about the benefits of non-traditional types of communication. Critiques of these ideas that scholars have put forward include that there is lack of formal training about using non-traditional types of communication so it is unfair to except students to be as comfortable with it as they are with written communication. Resources and Further Readings I created a section for “Sound Engineering” with resources and further readings. One scholarly article “Tuning the Sonic Playing Field: Teaching Ways of Knowing Sound in First Year Writing” by KF Ahern cites Shipka. Ahern points out how Shipka emphasizes the model of choice or allowing students to pick their own genres and materials. Another article called “The 21 Best Super Bowl Commercials Of All Time” on the CBS New York Website has videos of what are argued to be the 21 best super bowl commercials. Another resource is a YouTube video which has clips of the top 10 super bowl commercials of all time. These popular commercials are all soundly engineered as they effectively communicate their point to the listener. Another resource is an article by Ad Week which lists The World’s 17 Best Print Campaigns of 2013-14. Instead of videos, the article gives pictures of print ads that are soundly engineered. The fifth and final resource I used was a scholarly article called “A strategic analysis of the best television commercials ever produced” which was helpful in further analyzing this topic. This article discusses elements that make commercials soundly engineered. Citations for all five of these resources are included at the bottom of the Wiki. Relevant Keywords ''' "Sound Matters" by McKee "Sound Matters" by McKee Affordances Affordances Sound Engineering Sound Engineering '''Citations Grizzly Bear - Granny Diner | (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7tfcOfhcJY), Jody Shipka - Sound Engineering Shipka, Jody. "Sound Engineering: Toward a Theory of Multimodal Soundness." Computers and Composition 23.3 (2006): n. pag. Web. Jodi Shipka - Sound Engineering | https://writingacrosssummer14.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/shipka.pdf Ira Glass, The Art of Storytelling | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loxJ3FtCJJA&feature=youtu.be Resources and further readings: 1. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S8755461513000182 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPR3PB_VGVs 3. http://newyork.cbslocal.com/top-lists/the-21-best-super-bowl-commercials-of-all-time/ 4. http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/worlds-17-best-print-campaigns-2013-14-158466 5. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02500169808537886#.VIfgzjHF-So